


When It Is Dark Enough (You Can See the Stars)

by chaosandpandemonium



Series: Home Is Where The Heart Is [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dad!John, Gen, Growing Up, Hard childhood, Hunting lifestyle, Protective Winchesters, Sister!fic, Young!Winchesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 13:34:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5092655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaosandpandemonium/pseuds/chaosandpandemonium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one else they knew faced the darkness the way they did. No one else they knew could make the light so sweet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When It Is Dark Enough (You Can See the Stars)

**Author's Note:**

> Another fluffy/angsty oneshot for y'all! I just can't seem to get a bigger one out....oneshots are just too fun!

It was easier for Lida.

Neither she nor Sam had ever known anything but this life - at least, not that they could remember. Not in anything but their deepest dreams.

But Lida had known other versions of this life. She'd lived it with her mother, travelling, hunting, killing.

It scared them, sometimes - Sam and Dean and, occasionally, John. The fact that Lida had lived another life, had made memories with people and in places that they'd never know.

This other life that she'd led, it haunted her. None of them could forget how she'd looked when she'd come to them - or, more accurately, they to her.

Skinny but strong, feral but calm, shaking not with fear but anger - anger at her mother for leaving her, anger at herself for wishing it had happened sooner.

Suddenly she'd had a proper family, been loved and accepted for the first time in her living memory. Dean, and especially Sam, would complain about John, but Lida would never speak out against him. He was a thousand times better than Summer, no matter how bad he was, and she couldn't punish him for that. 

They'd noticed that she didn't speak much about Before. She clammed up whenever their childhoods were brought up (despite the fact that they were barely more than children themselves, the topic was discussed regularly).

The few memories she had shared were Hunting ones. The three of them had been horrified when she expected to be taken along on that first hunt. They'd had a break to get her adjusted, and when they'd gotten back into it, she'd looked at them with a straight face and asked for a gun. When she'd explained she'd been hunting with Summer before that, John's face had shut down.

Dean and Sam had coddled her for days after that. The thought of anyone taking a tiny nine-year-old on a hunt as back up was - well, if they hadn't seen how serious Lida had been when she said it, they wouldn't have believed it. 

So they'd made her sleep in, got her her favourite foods, did whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. They'd watched the TV programmes she'd chosen.

When he got back, John ordered them to stop spoiling her. He was already incredibly protective, and no child of his would become a spoilt brat. He'd help her by giving her things Summer never had - discipline, education, family, love - not a life of luxury, but enough.

Her brothers could see it in her eyes when she looked at him, the adoration, the hero worship.

Sam had only known this one hunting life. He hadn't known hardship and starvation the way Lida had, hadn't felt the keen edge of desperation slicing him from the inside out. So this existence was not enough for him. He always desired more.

He accepted that dad tried. He accepted it, but that didn't mean he liked it.

Dean, on the other hand, satisfied his hunger by simultaneously feeding it memories of his mother, and denying it existed in the first place. Besides, he was a simple creature. He had John, Sam and Lida. As long as that remained true, he was happy.

So yeah, it was easier for Lida. But it was hard for all of them.

These hardships, they shaped them. They moved them. They changed them.

No one else they knew faced the darkness they did. No one else they knew could make the light so sweet.


End file.
